Mostly friend, partly house-guest, Avery flung himself happily into an armchair with a tumbler of whiskey and made love with a thick red-bound volume whose import Raymond could not recall from amid the myriad of books lining the shelves.

Rachel asked what sort of books were our "cosy" favourites - the books you read when you aren't researching anything, or trying particularly to expand your horizons, but just to have a bit of literary dessert, as it were. I confess it was actually very hard to put together a list of "cosy" books for myself. I don't seem to read many of those. I almost put Watership Down on this list, if that is any indication... One other caveat: the older I get, the fewer books I re-read. Ain't nobody got time fo' that.

I don't know how many times I have read this book. I do recall curling up in my family's Lazy-Boy and reading it aloud to my cat, because she wanted to sit on my lap and I wanted to read the book to someone. It's still a delectable favourite, with a pungent taste of medieval atmosphere for which I am unfathomably grateful. And, you know, it's C.S. Lewis.

Er, this is a cosy book? I don't know. But it's one I really enjoy and one that I read every once and again just for fun.

Again, I'm not sure why this is on a cosy list, but here it is. A-a-and it's also C.S. Lewis.

"And to be surprised that the woman who brought me up should actually be lady-like!" Here is to my favourite of the Aquila stories: an old friend, and very familiar.

Chesterton! Chesterton and poetry! ("Sugar, dates, and pistachios!") This is a marvelous book and while I haven't actually read it through again, I do take it down sometimes to drink in the delicious lines.

This is one of the best children's books I have ever read, and it stands the test of time and age. Danger! prophecy! swords and armour! common-sense! virtues! hilarity! It has everything.

I didn't like any of the covers, so you get a fan poster instead. Howl's Moving Castle! Melodrama, tongue-in-cheek hilarity, magic, high tempers - it is the back face of a coin whose other side is The Gammage Cup.

And in a crescendo conclusion, The Grand Sophy - sparkling indeed with wit, more high tempers, good sense, wonderful characters, romping and rampaging and reigning on the page. What more do you want, I ask!

You know how nice it is to discover someone else shares your view, and was kind enough to put it into a succinct explanation, right? Well, I mentioned in Write It. Shoot It. that I am indebted to the fresh angle anime/Eastern animation can bring to the creative process, and today I want to unpack a method that I find is shared between myself and the award-winning animator Hayao Miazaki (whom I have mentioned on The Penslayer before). You remember that there is a running fad in literature today to cut numerous "unnecessary" words? This method kind of flies in the face of that.

I told Miyazaki I love the "gratuitous motion" in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.
"We have a word for that in Japanese," [Miyazaki] said. "It's called ma. Emptiness. It's there intentionally."

Ma. Emptiness. But not a meaningless emptiness. On the contrary, this "emptiness" is swollen with meaning, with life, with a purpose which is not dictated by the rushing helter-skelter of the artist's idea of the plot. This emptiness brings dimension and life to the character, because it makes that character's life so like our own.

[Miyazaki] clapped his hands three or four times. "The time in between my clapping is ma.
If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it's
just busyness. But if you take a moment, then the tension building in
the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant
tension at 80 degrees all the time, you just get numb."

I hear a lot of people tell writers to cut any text that doesn't progress the plot - and in large measure that advice is absolutely spot on. You shouldn't fill your manuscript with unnecessary trips to unnecessary places, you shouldn't drag the narration out when you could have just split the section and picked back up where you needed to be. But I do feel there is a time and a place for the "emptiness" to descend on the plot, if only for a moment. Sit still for a moment. Sigh. Look at something which has nothing to do with the narrow tunnel of the plot: it gives breathing space, it gives dimension, it gives the sense even for the characters that life goes on despite one's own immediate battle.

If you stay true to joy and astonishment and empathy you don't have to have violence and you don't have to have action. [The audience will] follow you.

As a descriptive matter of course in Talldogs the other day, I sat one of my characters down with a book. It is the sort of thing he would do. I pulled in a jumble of plot tension and progression, and after that, as my characters were sorting things out, I had my main character ask the other what book he was reading. The book has nothing to do with the plot, but the book has to do with their lives, with dimension, and technically that conversation about that otherwise meaningless book is emptiness. It is only a small piece of emptiness, not enough to bore the reader, and yet I find it of an utmost importance because it gives breathing space. Without it, the plot would be two-dimensional and the characters would exist solely for the purpose of "fixing" the plot's problems. But that is not what they exist for. They exist because I made them, they have lives because I wanted them to, and I give them dimension because I love them. I let them have their breathing space. I let them have the emptiness. I have already seen in readers a response of refreshment from this imitation of life in art, so I am not afraid to use it.

I admit, I am not a big fan of "classic" literature. It's not that I hate classic literature for the sake of hating classic literature; truth is, I'm not a big fan of any one genre, I'm a fan of numerous particular books. I never take things wholesale, I take them on their individual merits. So when I pose this query I don't want you to think we should all hie back to dense, massive books that go on for forty pages about a priest who has very little to do with the actual plot of the novel. Because that's silly.

However, I think my biggest beef with the contemporary fiction I've come across is that it is too much like a skeleton. There isn't enough meat on it. Writers today have a phobia of using "unnecessary" words (said, then, very, just, they, to name a few). So they cut them, almost to the point of creating crime upon the body of literature. I am not sure why writers feel the need to do this. Perhaps the argument is that readers don't want to read a bunch of words. Well, sure, readers are lazy. I'm lazy. But the solution to that problem is not in cutting words. It's in making the words make magic so that the reader no longer realizes he is participating in the exercise of reading.

A great example of a piece of contemporary fiction which pulls this off and still remains a chewable size is Rachel Heffington's recent debut Fly Away Home. Its diction is light on its feet, giving you the illusion of ease, and yet she uses words. There are words in that book. Let's face it: if you're reading this blog, you're probably a writer, and your only material with which to work is words. You are literally performing alchemy here. You are taking one heap of common materials (words), breaking it down in the crucible of your imagination, and coming out on the other side with something wholly other than what you started with (living persons, a story, a world). Don't cut yourself off from the one substance you have to work with. You need those words! You can't use them and be afraid of them at the same time.

On the other side of the spectrum from Heffington (because Fly Away Home is a "light" book, although by no means shallow), I am particularly prone to laying back my ears when people tell me to cut "unnecessary" words because my style relies on the cadence created by the words, and tends to have more text in a manuscript. I need those saids and verys and thens. I am trying to conjure in you the same visceral reaction you would have to poetry without scaring you with a length of poetry. I need that cadence. I need that beat. I need that sound that you hear in your head to be tangible. You may not realize it is happening (that is the large part of magic), but it is happening to you. And you know what? I use words to do that.

When you ask someone to pick a card out of a playing deck, you don't get rid of the other fifty-one cards thinking they are now superfluous. While that one card is the only card the person picked, it fails in its game if not supported by those other cards that no one sees during the sleight. In the same way, the reader's eye may "skim" words like said and very and then, and not consciously focus on them - but the impact is still there. You are making magic, and you are making it with words. There is nothing wrong with English, despite what you may have been told about adverbs and prepositions: the merit is in your deftness with its use.

It's no secret that I am a fan of Joss Whedon's work. I've seen a lot of "Buffy," some of "Dollhouse," I love the prematurely truncated show "Firefly" and its summation movie "Serenity;" "The Avengers" was an amazing film, and then the casual, homely, but sparkling production of "Much Ado About Nothing" is on par with the Kenneth Branagh film. He has a knack for telling a story with a fresh perspective, a jarring but pleasant spin - as a storyteller myself, I really appreciate his way of breaking outside the box.

The following is a list of writing tips attributed to Whedon. I've been mulling them over for a while, and thought I might share.

1. finish it

This one seems like a no-brainer, but I think we have all experienced that moment when the first love of the story seems to have died, when it is slugging and not blitzing. It's that moment when you discover whether you are toying with writing, or if you are really a writer. It's that moment when you discover how much grit you have in you, how much patience - and sometimes you don't have enough, but rather than despair, you carve out the grit and the patience as you go. Because you have to keep going. You'll need breaks, and research: no one is asking you to slog through non-stop, because that's stupid. You're going to have fresh ideas for new stories, and you're going to want to hurl yourself into that fresh meat, and no one will blame you, but you can't give up on your novel. Mirriam has two (what seem to me to be) amazing new stories blossoming in her brain-pan, but she has promised herself that she won't seriously dedicate her time to them until she has finished her work in progress. I've had to put Gingerune aside for the time being, but I haven't given up on it. I'll finish it. No matter what, the bottom line is finish it.

2. structure

As much as possible, have an extensive scope for your idea with which to work. When the going gets tough and the flame begins to die, you'll need a backup fuel supply to get through those times. It doesn't matter if you outline everything, or write as things come to you, think seriously about the scope of your story. Have scenes in mind off in the future. And if you can - this is very important - if at all possible, try, try, TRY to get your ending set up. You may not be able to do this right off the bat; that would be very difficult to do before you have discovered your characters and built their lives - but keep that idea revolving in your brain. The tires will catch on something eventually and you'll be off like a shot!

Also (and thanks to Rachel for bringing this back to my mind) it really helps to have a familiar place to work. She just moved her writing place and mentioned to me in a letter that she is having a lot of trouble writing since the move happened. She's not used to her new place yet. Her brain doesn't associate this new space with comfort and creativity. For some people, this is not nearly as big of an issue; for others, creatures of habit like myself, familiar, structured space is paramount.

3. have something to say

I don't mean everyone has to have an agenda. Everyone always has an agenda and there is really no point in beating that horse any deader than it already is. But make sure you care about what you are write, make sure it is true (or, alternately, not true), make it matter - make the reader care. In conversation, it is good manners to not speak until you have something of import to say: the same goes for writing. It doesn't have to original or groundbreaking. Just have something to say.

4. everyone has a right to live

Everyone has a life. Everyone is a me looking out at the world with a backstory, with a worldview, with a purpose. Don't write a superhero action scene in which the entire city is destroyed and countless lives are lost and we call it a win. They're not numbers, they're people. They matter. Human life, even fictional human life, is precious.

5. cut what you love

Reading back over a section of Plenilune the other day, I came across a piece that I had forgotten to edit. I'm going to have to take it out, and there were a few lines in the section that I really liked. But you know what, no one else is going to know that piece was ever there once I take it out, and if I leave it in, it will ultimately drag the story down. I'll use those pretty little lines somewhere else, no doubt. But the rest has to go. I love it, but it has to go. For the sake of the story, always do what is best.

6. listen

Personally, I don't mean this in merely a people-watching sense: I mean it on a deeper level than that. Listen to the way things work. Listen to the way people work. Listen to the way their hearts cry out - in agony and ecstasy. Listen to the sound behind sounds. It is like perfume: a burst of scent builds a sensation, often an image of places or colours, channelled through a wash of emotion. Listen for that sound which you hear in your head when you hear things in your ears. And then write that.

7. track audience mood

When people are reading a book that you have also read, pay attention to how they react to the way the plot unfolds. Pay attention to your own reactions. There is a kind of circadian rhythm to a good plot, a flow which the human mind finds pleasant to follow, even if it involves a thorough wrenching of emotions. While readers are your playthings, and their hearts are toys with which you can make light, you are at the mercy of their desires, and they will kick back at you if you make the ride unpleasantly rocky. Pay attention to what people like in a story.

8. write like a movie

At first I thought this had to do with dialogue, but now I don't think so at all. Dialogue will always be subject to the characters, to the time, and to the setting. A good writer will be very fluid with the type of dialogue he uses. Writing like a movie implies a vividness of impression. Reading a book is a very visual experience, and a movie is one of the most visual mediums of creative communication that we have today. The two can mesh very well. This is one thing I like so much about anime: the people who draw it and put it together literally see things from different angles and perspectives than we here in the West do, and it gives me a fresh way of twisting my writing away from the expected into the unexpected. Problem: I need to say in the text that my character gets to his feet, but that's boring, the kind of text people skim over and don't care about. Simple solution:

His reflection in the enormous hazel eye gathered itself together and got to its feet.

Throw the reader's angle of awareness into places it is not used to going. It helps shake things up, keeps things spicy, and keeps the reader's brain from dozing off while reading the text.

9. don't listen

"I stare at a word and think, 'Why can't you sound like Jenny?' And then I think 'Dash Jenny.' But in a very loving kind of way." She nodded gently upon me from a height of Hibernian gold, as if to will the words to fall as soft and snow-like as possible. I gave back a guttural whicker of amusement and sympathy, silently calculating how to wrap her round my little finger to get back at her for her advantage of height over me. "You may dash me, that's all
right.," I demurred. I kinked one hand up at the wrist and gazed with cool criticism on my nails. "I've dashed many other contemporary scribblers when I have that
looking-in-the-mirror-of-writing-and-never-feeling-beautiful
happenstance." I threw a daring look up at her from under my brows, something masculine staring out of my own eyes: her scarlet lips flashed in defiant amusement. There. I had won.

You're going to hate yourself. You're going to want to be someone else. Someone is going to tell you that you're not doing it right (they are often correct) and they're going to tell you how it's done (they are often wrong). The trick is to remember that, while many people are alike, there is only one you: only you know your creative genius, only you can do your creativity just your way. Don't listen to the others. Don't listen to that absurd negative voice that I fight with (and lose against) every single day. Just don't.

Simon: Captain, why did you come back for us?Malcolm: You're on my crew.Simon: Yeah, but...you don't even like me. Why'd you come back?Malcolm: You're on my crew. Why we still talkin' about this?

10. don't sell out

You have to work for your dreams, and sometimes it's really not fun. You have to watch the market swing wildly away from your interests, from your genre, from your style, from everything that fires you as a writer. You have to face the fear of never being liked as an author. You have two choices: write what the masses want and cheat yourself of the joy of your own creative spirit, or run the risk of never being popular and of coming to the end of your life having stayed true to your self. And no one ever thought highly of a man who pandered to the crowd. So don't sell out. For your sake. Don't sell out.

But Avery had become invested in his own reins and was fiddling with them protractedly, the ends of his forelock damp and dangling in his eyes. “I was going to say you could kill him,” he admitted at length; “but then I was not sure in my own heart that I was gammoning, and I frightened myself.”

talldogs

“Spoken like a Maresman,” laughed Avery.

talldogs

Her face blossomed like an orchid, colouring faintly, and a little of the St. Jermaine bled through, somehow, in the surprised joy of her countenance.

talldogs

He pivoted—her head whirled—and swung her into the light again; downward bent, his teeth laughed at her, canines abnormally sharp in his mouth: was it the lighting and the terror, or did his mouth look sheeny red, as with blood?

maresgate

He pressed his first two fingers to her broken lips and hauled the horsewhip back behind his head. His eyes flashed.

"Fight me!"

maresgate

Turning back, he asked, "Did you cry?"

cruxgang

Taking his finger from his broken skin, [Bruin] asked gently, mockingly, “What will you do to me, which Badger has not already done?”

lamblight

Playfully quizzical and suspicious he produced his hand like a lady, head backflung to watch her slip her fingers beneath his as a steadying influence, and lay two, three drops of the light brown liquid on the flecked skin. The marriage of living heat and essence was instant. [He] was overcome by the sharp top note of black pepper, red-laced across his vision, and in a moment he was wandering through the scents of nutmeg and blood orange, smooth and powerful as the sides of a sorrel mare. And down beneath it all, rich and made richer with the passing of time, lay the olibanum, a gift of kings and to Christ himself.

cruxgang

Her sister’s voice was careening downward into softer, more desperate tones. “Damn Goddgofang,” she panted disconsolately. “Damn him. I hate him. I hate him. I hate you all…”

maresgate

He walked up behind her through the silent dark to where she knelt on the gaily-coloured travertine in the pillowing cloud of candlelight, a bundle of silk around her waist. Her hair was piled atop her head; her bare back and shoulders glistened with scented oils. With his feet mingling in the water and his humours mingling with her perfume, [he] slipped his hand around her throat and drew back her head. She stiffened, eyelashes fluttering: her left hand closed tightly on her straight-razor.

He pressed his mouth against the curve of her brow and came away damp. Her blood beat beneath his fingertips.
"You are good to me."

cruxgang

His teeth flashed in that curious angry humour of his family. “By the twelve houses! I remember when you were just a kitten mewling on your mother’s knee. A’come,” he added, beckoning. As he came a step into the room, the candlelight stroked the backs of its hands down the silver threaded into his blue-black doublet. He stood above her and smiled down into her face, something deliberately soft and gentle flung over the natural harshness of his countenance. “Come, my little black-haired wench."

maresgate

With a very horse-like bluster through her lips Pan Aeneas took the pick off the top of the post and slung it over between her fingers, very deftly, like a magician, so that the handle of it was toward me. With my brow against Bramimound’s chevron quarter-mark for balance I cupped her hoof in one hand and took the pick from Pan Aeneas in the other, hitching up at hoof and haft and kinking my knees to get all the parties of this little domestic game into their positions.

ampersand

“Shh,” [Bruin] bade her, finger laid to his lips as she opened hers. His eyes stabbed into her own and he saw the momentary fear pass behind those green curtains. He put one hand under her bare elbow, fingers closing on the chilled skin, and put his other hand behind her ear: her eye followed it with veiled apprehension. When he took it back out, he held a silver coin between his first two fingers. He pressed the flesh-warm metal to the woman’s lips and smiled. “Go home,” he said, and made sure there was no brooking his tone. “It is going to rain.”lamblight

"You have a little bit of fire, enough to make it worthwhile to punish you, but not enough to make yourself disagreeable."

maresgate

"You have your 'He is a blackguard, and I will enjoy grinding him between my teeth' look. Would you care to introduce me to the miscreant?"

cruxgang

"Take my hand, and do not touch me."lamblight

"He's got guts," I remarked, "among other things. I like him."

ampersand

I smiled coaxingly. “My dear, I do not use the people I love.”

“No!” he replied with a sudden sharpness; “they are glad to spend and be spent for you! You have only to look at them and the elements of their souls are as molten in your hands.”

ampersand

"May his seed wither, and his woman grow ugly!"

cruxgang

The corner of [Bruin's] mouth crawled with an unpleasant smile. He dropped his gaze to the pencil and knife in his hands, and went about the work of sharpening it, his body thrown back against the glass casement of the secretary. It was too bold a card she played, but he would accept it and give his opponent something to work with. It was not unenjoyable, being game master. Without looking up, he asked,

You know how you can be minding your own business, doing the most habitual thing in your life, and a new story idea comes to you? "Thus the female mind." I think this newest idea will make Number Ten (roughly speaking) in my Plenilune series which I am working on (Talldogs makes Number Three - Ethandune, who is Number Two, will be overhauled and expanded from its two-month blitz at some point in the future).

mirrors

I've used my tentative, embryonic scene for this newest story as my Chatterbox. This month's Chatterbox subject is mirrors, but the actual story (so far as I know) does not hinge upon mirrors. They are a prop, a foil. And upon my soul I have cheated so shamelessly this month, it is a wonder Rachel didn't throw me off a cliff. I lo-o-ove you, Rachel.

my lord avery

“Is my Lord Avery
at home?”

I slipped loose
the heavy garnet fibula and let my chamois slide from my shoulders into Julia’s
hands.The maid took it and I turned in
the burnt shadows of the hall entryway, my nostrils full of the scent of mown grass
and freshly baked goods.The wind was in
its summer quarter, and the familiar smells of Amaranth in the height of the
year hummed inside my veins.My heart
had been going at a quickened pace since the morning two days past, and had not
slowed: now that I stood upon the threshold of my future, its gait seemed to
redouble.

Julia folded my
little riding cloak in her arms and took up my pack with ease.She was a tall woman, a little roughened from
use, but surprisingly strong for her light-boned build.With the yellowed evening light catching on
the thin grey of her eyes she looked down a little at me, smiling
straightly.“Aye, hast been expecting
thee these two days past.He was a dragon
in these halls this morning!”

Guilt was added to
the active emotions in my chest.If only
Father had not been tardy returning from Battens and I had been sent off in due
time!I knew I was not late for my own
coming-out, but I should have arrived at Amaranth at least a day ago.I had not known my Lord Avery to ever be
cross with me—trifling and, at times, a little perplexed, but never cross—but
when he was out of temper there was no gentle place in the world for my
soul.I hoped he was not angry now.

“Art dusty, and
thirsty besides,” remarked Julia gaily, in ignorance of my trepidations.“Come by and I will set up the bath for thee
and tuck thee in before supper.”

“Thank you,
Julia,” I replied meekly, and tread softly along behind her down the hall.The stone flags underfoot were scored and
scarred with fire, but the walls were new, and still looked to me a little like
playthings, they were so clean-cut and fresh.“Give them another six generations,” my Lord Avery had once said to me—I
glanced over my shoulder: I had been sitting on the stone kerb of the wall on
the east side, where the summer’s evening light would hit me, and I had been
reading a book of history.My Lord Avery
had looked on the book with a strange fondness and his eye had not been upon
me.“These walls will grow hoary about
the whiskers with age.”

The rest of the
house was old—very old.I walked after
Julia through a narrow arched doorway into a darkened dog-leg of corridor where
very few lights shone after dusk and it was a horror to walk in the dead of
night, even with a lamp.I have never
been equal to the dark.Many other
things I have conquered in my sixteen years, but the dark has not been one of
them.

The buckle of my
saddle-bag jingled as Julia moved.

She took me to the
familiar blue-tiled washroom with its high narrow window and plumbing that could
alternately freeze your bones and strip the skin off your muscles with its
heat.It was a small, familiar,
fish-scale-coloured place, and I was glad to see it.

Julia shut the
door behind me and moved to place my pack on the stuffed seat of the armchair
by the old copper tub.As she began to
remove my clothing and lay out a fresh set of garments for me, I moved to the
basin and framed my reflection in the round, heavily gilt oval of the mirror.The face which gazed back at me was paled by
the blue light, but picked out on the cheeks with lively pink, woefully
freckled, and shrouded in the flaxen hair which the wind of my ride had teased
from its coils.

Mon coeur, I sighed dismally.I had hoped that, magically, the eve of my
coming out would wake a kind of spell that would make me very beautiful.In all respects I was tolerable, respectable,
and plain.Most days I could contrive to
believe that I was not ugly: very few days came which found me vain.But
tomorrow, I reasoned with myself and with providence, I should have liked to be beautiful, and to stand before the world with
unrivalled grace.My Lord Avery—

“There is the
clothing for thee,” said Julia, rising and turning to me.“Canst undress thyself?”

I drew my gaze
from the image in the mirror.“Yes.Thank you, Julia.”

She pinched the
corners of her gown and dipped.“I will
get a glass for thee and come back to thee presently.”

“Thank you,
Julia.”

She went out
through the heavy oak door, shutting it again so that its iron latches squealed
a little in their places, and I was left with the hollow sound of my own voice
echoing in my ears.Thank you, Julia.I would be
saying that often.

I unbuttoned the
throat of my riding habit and crossed to the tub.It was a sweltering day, and my head was
light with the blaze of the sun.A cool
bath, cool enough to jolt the brain back to reality—a heart-thundering
reality—would be the sort of thing Lady Greymere of Hol would take.Would she not?With my hand upon the handle of the spigot, I
frowned over my shoulder at that ordinary reflection.

You have always misfitted your name.I turned the water on and felt the cold dig
its fingers into my palm through the sweaty metal pipe.Then, as an aside, I have been waiting for this moment all my life.Why am I so terrified of it now?

As I stood
placidly watching the tub fill, my fingers toying with the purple pearl buttons
of my silk, it crossed my twitching mind that I had not brought my set of combs
with me, choosing to use those which were held here for my use in the little
ivory drawer of my little ivory dressing table.I would need them.

I shut off the
water and let myself out of the washroom.The muffled sound of my boots on the stone flags was my only
accompaniment as I wound through the familiar passages to my bedroom at the
rear of the house.It was a beautiful
room, long and low-seeming, with a bank of leaded windows looking out over the
park.There was always good light in
that room, and it was lavishly furnished.As a bower, I did not know its rival.

I turned the
corner to my room and stopped, mumchance, my lungs fighting to expel a sudden
wave of rotten stench.It was as though
something had died, and been left to decompose!I slung my elbow over my mouth and hurried by the window, bracing as the
sharp light lanced across my eyes, and dove for my bedroom door.My foot hit a little red thing on the
floor—something like a rose petal; the door stuck and banged as I pushed it
open.

The butcher scent,
which I thought had been coming in from the window, welled out at me as I stood
stricken in the doorway.I got a
confused image of scarlet and a man’s silhouette, but it was a moment before my
flogged brain could pick itself up from the oppression of the smell.I jumped back, flinching, as a fly dove for
my face, and then a familiar voice was cutting through the miasma—

“Don’t come in here!”

Something wet and
red hit the back of my hand and I recoiled from the threshold.When I could see, when I could breathe
without gagging, I looked up through the fan of electrum evening light to find
my Lord Avery standing half upon the seat of a chair, half upon my receiving
table, holding what looked like the cover of my windowseat like Atlas above his
shoulders.He kinked it backward, cutting
off the aureole around his head; long red droplets, shining in the light, fell
to the ground behind him.

“Greymere!”His voice was reproachful, harsh and
serrated.My body shrank from it, but
already my eyes were starting round the room, glassing over as they took in the
shattered furniture, the scarlet smears on the lime-washed walls, the
bed-hangings ripped and sodden with blood.There was a puddle inside the doorway not far from me which had
thickened, but still carried its rich, guttural shine; three flies were skirting
its oblong perimeter.

“Lord Avery!” I
gasped weakly.“What—what have you
done!”

“Don’t come in here,” he snapped.Then, beneath his breath, “Shi’batch! you would come at this
instant!”

It was a new word
for me.In the back of my mind I wondered
what it meant, and if I could use it.Later I would pull it out and see what his response was.I was not sure how Lady Greymere ought to use
such things.

I stared at the
coagulating blood and the flies.“What
happened?Did you kill someone?”I took a step over the threshold.

“No—don’t come
in!”He took a step up onto the tabletop
and swung the windowseat-cover off his shoulders.It spat blood across my carpets and stained
the cream linen of the back-turned bedspread.

“What are you
doing?” I demanded.My stomach was
feeling queasy and my voice sharpened to cover it.“What
happened!”

It did not occur
to me that he might not know.He was
Lord Avery, head and shoulders above me, even when he was not standing on a
table, and I had always looked up to him as a kind of god.It did not occur to me that he might not
know.

He set the cover
down on the floor, dropping its weight against the lip of the table.As he bent his face was plunged in grey
shadow, and I was able to see his eyes, brown-hazel in the light, flickering
round the room as if he was expecting something more to spring out at him.I, too, travelled round the room with my eye,
sick-feeling and suspicious, repulsed by the sheer amount of carnage that
covered my belongings.There was so much
blood.It was throat-catching,
filthy—the lot would have to be burned.

It must not be human.It is
too much blood.Perhaps it is cow-blood,
or pig—something no one would notice if it was slaughtered.A human would go missing, and surely—my mind darted back over countless items of information I had picked
up from my Lord Avery over the years, pieces he had probably not been aware I
was storing away—surely this is too much
for one person to bleed out.

But where are the bodies?

My Lord Avery
stood on the table, the crown of his fair hair brushing the ceiling, and gazed
round on the room with a kind of sullen despair.I pressed tenaciously to the entryway, my
hands clasped together among my skirts, and tried to make myself as small as
possible.He was deeply in thought, and
I was always fearful of disturbing him when he was angrily pensive.

He looked down at
a shattered chair between himself and a scarlet end of bedding.“Is that a new gown?” he asked lightly.

I coloured and
looked down the length of my dress.It
was a dove-grey silk, ribbed in glossy purple thread.My father had ordered it so that I might not
come with trunks full of old gowns.“Yes,” I murmured.

He nodded
sharply.“It is very becoming on you.”

My colour
deepened.It was only very recently that
he had taken to remarking, now and then, on the cut of my gowns, and I had not
grown accustomed to the event.But he
was not cross with me, and I was emboldened to prompt,

“Who would have
done this—please?”

My Lord Avery
flung a sharp laughing look at me, covering a latent fury which he did not want
me to see.“ ‘Please’!I am sorry my tone was so strong.But sooth I do not know,” he added in a
growling, baffled voice.“Have you see
Malcholm?”

I shook my head,
and the blonde tendrils of my hair trembled around my cheeks.“No.Julia saw me in, but I did not see Malcholm.”

He thrust his
hands down upon his hips and scrunched his nose in perplexity.“Aye!I do not think anyone knows of this.And yet the windows are not broken, nor the latches undone.I have a wretched worm in my heart telling me
it was a person of my own household.”He
looked at me sidelong and quizzical.“Have you ever,” he began, then stopped as if he had thought better of
it.

I stood very small
and cold in the doorway, wondering what was going on behind his suddenly
inscrutable face.

He began again,
speaking his words very gently, as if they were made of glass and might cut his
lips.“Have you ever had a disagreement
with any of the members of my household?”

A disagreement!I was not yet out, and despite the strength and the money behind my
name, I was not powerful or clever—not as powerful or clever as I wished I
was—but I heard the words he did not speak and I felt the heat rise in my
face.My voice came out very soft.

“No, my lord.”

His eyes widened a
fraction, like a wick when it catches the flame and sinks again.“ ‘Please’ and ‘my lord.’What have I done to deserve this treatment?”

I shifted my heel
toward the corridor.“I am sorry, my
lord.”It seemed very clear to me
now.Someone was jealous.Perhaps someone had had her eye on my Lord
Avery for some time now, and felt I was unworthy of such a position.And I was, was I not?My throat was very dry: I tried to
swallow.It had been an old, settled
thing before I had shaken out of the mould.And look at how I had shaken!Here I stood on the brink of my coming-out and the announcement of the
shape of my life, and someone had painted a very clear sign of what would
happen to me if I should dare to go forward.It was very clear to me.

My heart felt like
a broken silver.

“I am sorry.”

My Lord Avery was
very quiet and I did not dare to look up at him for the corners of my eyes were
smarting and any movement might send a telltale pearl of water over the
edge.But at last he said, very gently
and very thoughtfully,

“I am facing a
room debauched in something’s blood
and the suspicion that someone of my house is trying to send me an unpleasant
message—not very clearly, but very poignantly—and the little chit standing
before me, to my mind, is not upset about any of these things.She is upset about something, but not these
things.”

“I am—I am very
sorry.”My throat was tight, but I
pulled the words out of my mouth with an effort.I straightened my shoulders.How I wanted to get out of this and run away
from it like a coward!I levelled my
chin at the nightmare.“Did you—did you
jilt someone?”

This appeared to
take him aback.The chape of his sword
clawed across the back of a chair as he pivoted with the movement of his
surprise.“Jilt?No more than you, it would seem!Whom would I have jilted?”

It was all a bad
omen: Father’s lateness, the bloody carnage, the flies.My stomach crawled up my backbone and hid
there.“The timing is—tomorrow is my—was
my—coming-out.To find my room like
this—”

His voice cut
across mine.“If you think you are
playing a very subtle game with your words, your grammar is markedly
telltale.But let us suppose you are in
the right.I can think of no female I
have jilted—not to her face, at the least—but the landscape has an expression
of revenge, don’t you think?”His teeth
flashed and his nostrils flared on the scent of his words and the old bloodlust
of his noble pedigree.“Sooth, I did not
want you in here because I would rather you not see the foreskin that is nailed
to the lintel.”

“Shi’batch!”I jerked from the doorway and scrubbed at the
blood-streak on the back of my hand.“An’
sure it was a woman!”

“Why—language,
girl!—why a woman?” my Lord Avery laughed.

My flesh trembled
with appreciative revulsion.“A man
would not do such a thing.”

His brows flickered
admittingly.“An’ true.Ma
petite mère,” he added, swinging down off the table to stand with the sun’s
areole around his head, “I believe you have just formally graduated from the
schoolroom.”

I bit my lip and
stared up at him from an angle, discomforted and frightened and desperately
hopeful.He had used his old pet name
for me—could that be a good omen among all these nasty imports?Could it be that he was not looking round at
this violated chamber and looking twice at the picture he had made in his mind
of his future?

He hooked his
middle finger through his sword-belt at his back and gave it an unconscious
hitch.“It is in my mind that you are
right,” he said in a more serious tone.He smiled straight-lipped and mirthless at me, and the hope in my chest
died.“Someone—an’ I do not know who,
but I am sure I will meet presently—someone is towering angry with me, and from
the looks of things it is a woman.”

I ventured among
the dead embers of my hope, and they did not burn my feet as much as I would
have thought.“It is not me she is angry
at?That was your first thought.”

Out of the corner
of my eye I saw him whip his head toward me.“It was my first thought that it was a man playing a brutal game with
your sensibilities.I have got account
of that kind of thing done before, and it is not pretty.”He came carefully across the mess toward me,
sure not to set his boot in any of the congealed patches of blood.His shadow thickened on my trembling
skin.“But now that I look at it anew I
am convinced you are right.This was not
a man’s work.Not a lady’s work, either,
but certainly not a man’s.”

Was he
convinced?My mind backstepped quickly
from his advance, and a new, nasty thought occurred to me: what if he knew more
than he let on, what if he was trying to convince me, and all this was a façade to break up the coming-out and the
announcement and everything I had anticipated all my life?What if he wanted none of it, and sought a
bold way out?Oh—oh God—my chest hurt abominably.“My lord—” I began thickly.

“I am a lord,” he
cut me off gently; “I am also a man, and I will take my liberties.”

Next thing I knew
my heart was in my throat and his hand was firm beneath my chin, drawing it up
so that he could touch my mouth with his.It was so sudden, so unexpected, that I did not catch my own reaction of
his lips and his smell and the comfort of his presence until the thing was
over—and then he was smiling soft and crooked down at me, as if something hurt
a little on his inside, and he asked,

“Now tell me: why
does my first kiss taste of salt?”

I gasped and
ducked my head to brush the back of my knuckle against my dampened eye.“I—I am sorry,” I stammered and stared at his
feet.“Please do not—I do not mean to
cause you trouble—if you would rather send me back—”

I heard his teeth
in his voice when he spoke.“I thought
that was the thing which troubled you.Send you back!My girl, what kind
of picture have you painted of me, that I would backstep from the gate like a
coward?If this is the way the weird
lies, I will follow it, and nothing will induce me to upset either your coming
out or the formal announcement of our engagement.”His voice softened a little, but the sound of
his teeth was still in it.“Sooth, my
own blood is up, and I would like to look the witch in the eye who has done
this.A good test of our mettle, don’t
you think, you and I?”

He put his hand up
on the doorhead and leaned into it, tall and dominant above me, and the
presence in his eye as he stared down at me was blunt and heavy like high
summer sunlight on my skin.I did not
feel brave—I was still sick inside—but I thought he was in earnest, and with
the knowledge of that, feeling better would come in time.

His free hand
brushed my cheek and he said without lifting his gaze from me, “Malcholm.Art just the man I am needing at this
moment.Come soft.”

I pressed into the
wallspace behind me and turned to see the big soft-spoken steward standing
hesitant in the hallway some yards behind.He was a great man for silence and efficiency, and I knew that in a
moment my Lord Avery would speak a few deft words in his ear and turn the
matter of my bedchamber over to capable hands.Malcholm would know, but would not mind save that it was a matter
pertaining to his lord’s comfort, that someone had painted a gruesome message
across the threshold of my life.

Staring at my
hands clasped in my skirts, I wished powerfully that I could determine what the
message said.

My Lord Avery bent
to my ear.“Chin up, ma mère.Do not look so peaky.I will see
you at supper.”

Then he
backstepped into the doorway again and Malcholm joined him, nodding with kindly
deference to me as he passed, and in a few moments I had my back to them and
was wandering in a daze toward the washroom.Nothing felt right to me.My Lord
Avery did not yet feel safe in my grasp and the vicious thing which had
happened cast a sordid pall over the glint and glimmer of the ton into which I was about to be
ushered.

But perhaps my Lord Avery is not wrong.My breastbone
ached with the effort of hopefulness.He is not cross with me, nor regretful.God and his angels preserve me—I could not
bear it if he was regretful.I came
to the washroom door and let myself in silently upon the gentle blue-lit
chamber.Perhaps it is not all glint and gilt, but blood too, and we will come
together through it, he and I.Those
were his words.

I shuddered and
slipped the lock to on the door behind me.I do not feel safe.

Crossing to the
tub, I turned the water on once more and watched the high pale light dancing in
the coppery depths.My fingers played
with the long row of buttons down the front of my silk, and as the silk fell
open the air stroked my nettled skin.With an effort I drew a deep breath to soothe the tension of my chest
and found the tang of blood was still in my nose.

I jerked my head
toward the mirror.Something told me it
was there the moment before I saw it, but the little scream still started from
my throat.The bloodied back of my hand
flew to my mouth and I recoiled, grasping the edge of the tub for support.The mirror was slashed and streaked with
bloodied handprints, and across the width of it someone had written—